It wasn't that Howell didn't do what it had to do to score; the misleading part was what Milford did to not score.

The Mavericks had several sustained drives that ended in Howell's red zone, but ultimately led to nothing on the scoreboard.

"It was the most upsetting game we've had all year," coach Tim Gough said. "We were not outmatched in any facet of the game outside of making mistakes. We turned the ball over and we made mental errors we haven't made in weeks.

"We were inside the 10-yard line twice with zero points to show for it."

Howell did what it had to do in taking advantage of the miscues. The Highlanders scored the only touchdown of the first quarter when quarterback Brett Chaperon broke free on a 46-yard run.

Chaperon threw for a pair of touchdowns in the second quarter. The first was 2 yards to Austin Foumier and the second 40 yards to Trevor Wetzel.

Howell's Evan Siemen added a 54-yard run before the half as Howell took a commanding 28-0 lead into the break.

The only points of the second half came in the fourth quarter on a 3-yard run by Jake Macey.

Howell had a 356-237 advantage in total yards, but the biggest differential was turnovers, where Milford coughed up the ball three times to once for Howell.

"It was not 13- and 14-play drives that they just dominated us down the field and scored on," Gough said. "It was four big plays of lots of yards that we made mistakes on.

"On offense, we were in the red zone multiple times and we turned it over. We had botched snaps and we made the wrong reads as a quarterback."